Well thanks for the interesting perspective and I’m very glad to hear it wasn’t so one-sided everywhere, and that you’ve seen a lot more positives! Everything you said about causes of strife makes perfect sense to me and I would imagine those feature heavily for folks who try it out due to simple curiosity or pressure from a partner.

I would imagine, too, that sexual trends exhibit regionality and that they diffuse across regions over time and at uneven rates, much like any other cultural trend. Though of course a lot of cultural diffusion has gotten effectively instant thanks to tech - I remember “back in the day” you could travel from a (US) coast to the Midwest and find everyone basically 10-20 years behind cultural trends, from slang to hairstyles, to dress.

I wonder if relationships and dating and such, being a much slower process in general than changing styles of dress or speech, still have some of that interesting old-school slower diffusion, or more regional pockets anyway.

Anyway, enough baseless speculation from me - cheers and have a good one!

(Edit: I hope it didn’t sound like I’m calling your chosen romantic style itself a trend - I would never, when I call polyamory a “trend” I am referring exclusively to folks who did behave exactly as if it were any other fad that came and went, just with way heavier consequences)

Since you seem knowledgeable, maybe I’ll bug you about something I’ve wondered about?

Did you notice a significant (huge by my measure) increase in attempts at polyamory for a period of time? As in, that trend seemed to have almost a start and an end, and a real big swell in the middle. And if so, any comments on how that fits into your timeline overview above? Some of your thoughts sound like they may point to this but I certainly don’t want to put words in your mouth.

Anecdotally, it seems to me like I watched a huge chunk of my (significantly) younger sister’s generation get themselves into plural relationships, then realize after a year or two of various attempts (often including some serious abuse) that actually they didn’t like that idea at all.

And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely encourage people to try what they are curious about, it’s a tragedy to spend a life never exploring what one might like. But that phenomena with polyamory / plural relationships in particular stuck out to me, largely because many of the people I saw try it had never previously indicated even remote interest in similar, some behaved fairly jealously toward their partners actually. It felt like a strange societal motivation, some kind of soft cultural pressure among peers, to go for it. And I personally never witnessed a positive outcome, either (which is not me saying that no one should live that way if they enjoy it, or that no one can find it genuinely fulfilling, healthy, and preferable). And for those with clear gender lines in the plural relationships, it was always polygynous - never polyandrous (please let me know if those terms are offensive). Felt like weaponized sexual liberation, frankly, by horny dudes, but that’s me making some possibly unfair leaps and introducing my own bias into the interpretation.

I guess more than anything else I was just struck by what felt like a wave in popularity, followed by an accompanying wave of “oh, nah fuck that actually, forever”. Was interesting to watch. Any thoughts?

(Disclaimer: this can be a thorny topic, anyone should feel free to correct anything I’ve misrepresented, misunderstood, or just been unkind about, I’m not a jerk on purpose usually).

Feel like saying more about what ya like?

Just in the name of completeness, I wouldn’t say that’s the only downside. I definitely have some stability issues with Bazzite, only when gaming though. But game crashes, occasional OS crashes, that hasn’t been exactly rare for me. But I will say, gaming is about the one thing in my life I’m almost unwilling to troubleshoot these days. Could be something specific to my setup that is uncommon for others, making my data point unhelpful.

And by and large, I’d absolutely recommend it for any Windows user who wants an easily transferable user experience and broadly fantastic gaming support with minimal fuss.

Would you be willing to say more about what you know / experienced about the removal of Discover? Preferences included? I only noticed it recently, been away from things for a bit, and you sound like your brief info would probably be at least as fruitful as the reading I was gonna look for :)

Chaos and destruction alone remain the companions of the terrible goose.

Geese are some hideous demon’s creation. The Canada goose in particular is a creature built to desanctify life itself.

Haha, I wish I had that kind of commitment to a bit.

It all worked out, but I appreciate your defensiveness! It was a mixed group, 'twas the lads cracking jokes, and not even to her - she’s a sensitive one (which I love). The funniest part is the coach wore a silly (admittedly less silly) mustache the whole season, his son was one of the goobers cracking jokes, and everyone actually really got along great over the season.

On the other hand, the kinda stuff you’re describing does happen, and my kiddo has already had to extract herself from a friend group that was heading solidly in that direction. No bueno! Bad parenting by crappy people usually, in my experience.

Thanks for the link that is really fascinating, though I also want to acknowledge that I feel almost crazy if this is a prevalent thing and I haven’t noticed?

I’d be kinda pleased if it were largely a rejection of performative positivity, one of the theories presented. I think we could all stand to be a bit more honest with each other about how things are going. Actually I think it’s probably necessary, if we’re ever going to meaningfully change.

I do worry about the ways the COVID pandemic (another theory) interrupted social development for an enormous number of kids, just huge. Though to be clear I was in favor of pretty strict, sweeping measures to limit spread, and don’t feel differently today.

I bristled a bit at first, on the mention of “quiet quitting” - AKA behaving perfectly rationally, given the available opportunities and treatment today, by my measure. But the (still Wikipedia) article it links to is a solid overview of a collective action tactic, so hell yeah.

e: can’t help but elaborate sometimes

I’m 2 weeks that kid is gonna look like he lost an argument with a weed whacker lol

I’m the opposite, I say bring on the stupid shit and do it often! Life’s short and looking kinda silly on purpose sometimes is fun. My most recent foray into such was a mustache large enough to be mocked by my daughter’s soccer teammates, first practice, basically on sight hahaha. Causing her to cry (and me to shave it, lol, but it was fun while it lasted, and I don’t intend to further traumatize her with sartorial silliness).

These are arguments to refuse censorship much harder, not to comply.

Really wish we would all shun this voluntary self-censoring of very mild words. Fuck the platforms and their algorithms and fuck the people who censor basic language.